In a known automobile configuration, a fuel fill pipe is accessed through a fuel fill door located in a vehicle body side opening. The opening contains a fuel fill system housing which protects the end of the fuel fill pipe, and an access door hinge connects the fuel fill door to the housing. It is known to provide the fuel fill doors in the same color as the body panels adjacent the door and to fit the access door surface smoothly into the contour of the body panel in which it is located. It is known also to provide the fuel fill system housings and the plastic fuel fill doors separately to the vehicle assembly plants because the doors require painting to match the vehicle body. The access doors either are painted with the vehicle body in the assembly plant, or are painted in a separate outside vendor location and provided to the assembly plant in a painted condition. In either situation, it is common that the access door is installed onto the vehicle in a separate location from the housing installation. It is often desired that the access door and hinge attachment features are not visible to the customer, thereby providing a cleaner, more aesthetically appealing and upscale appearance for the vehicle.
It can be difficult to align the access door correctly for attachment to the access door hinge in the environment of an assembly line. By hiding attachment features from the consumer in the final installation, the attachment features are also hidden from or difficult to be seen by the assembly line worker. This can slow the worker's performance, especially if the worker has several operations to complete on each vehicle. Accordingly, to increase assembly plant efficiency, there is value in simplifying the assembly line workers' job requirements. A difficult to align door may also increase worker stress and frustration. As a result of difficult alignment, the assembly line worker might not properly or fully install the fuel fill system access door on the access door hinge. This may later surface as a quality issue if the door becomes detached from the hinge and/or has poor appearance or fit in relation to the vehicle body side.
Another problem that can arise is in fitting the access door and access door hinge together so as to achieve a no gap assembly. The door to hinge interface is designed with a specified fit relationship between confronting parts; however, due to manufacturing variations, a specific combination of a hinge and a door may have an actual fit relationship different from the designed relationship. In a known assembly procedure, the parts are tested fit together, which of course requires additional time. Any looseness between the test fitted parts is measured, and if the looseness is within the design parameters, tunable surfaces are modified to eliminate the gap and achieve a no gap assembly. If the measured gap is outside of the design parameters, such that adjustment would not achieve the desired fit, the parts are not used, and are therefore wasted. With the target being a no gap fit in the final assembly, installation efforts are high and the possibility of improper installation are also high.
Known designs for access doors and access door hinges provide no definitive signal or indication to the installer that the parts are fully, completely and correctly installed. An installer may believe that the door has been attached completely when the door remains out of position slightly relative to the hinge on which it is installed. Further, known designs require high assembly force, which can lead to installer fatigue and incompletely attached access doors.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a construction in which a no gap installation can be achieved without requiring pre-installation fitting and adjustment of the parts, a construction which tolerates a wider range in manufacturing variations, a construction which provides visible cues and physical control of part positioning during assembly, and/or a construction which assembles easily with minimal force to thereby reduce installer fatigue.